Dell OMSA 5 on Debian

Since the advent of the debianized version of Dell OMSA installation has been a breeze. Just add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list

# OMSA
deb http://ftp.sara.nl/pub/sara-omsa [1] dell sara

and then install using

aptitude update
aptitude install dellomsa

In case you have the mpt-based SAS controller you need to load the mptctl module. I haven't tested this myself but I had some feedback from user using the SAS 5/i storage controllers. Thanks for that info! Well, just load the module and restart OMSA and the storage information should be available.

modprobe mptctl
/etc/init.d/instsvcdrv restart

On a 64-bit machine you will not be able to login to the web interface unless you add some files from a 32-bit installation and edit a configuration file. So if you have a 64-bit installation of Etch then copy these files from a 32-bit version of an Etch installation:

/lib/libselinux.so.1
/lib/libsepol.so.1
/lib/security/pam_nologin.so
/lib/security/pam_unix.so

I've put up the files from a Debian Etch 32-bit in case you don't have a 32-bit system. See link below.

Start with copying the libraries to /lib32/. You might need to install the package ia32-libs to get 32-bit applications playing on a 64-bit system.

Edit /etc/pam.d/omauth and replace /lib with /lib32 so the end result looks like this:

#%PAM-1.0
#auth       required     pam_stack.so service=system-auth
#auth       required    /lib/security/pam_nologin.so
#account    required    pam_stack.so service=system-auth
auth       required     /lib32/security/pam_unix.so nullok
auth       required     /lib32/security/pam_nologin.so
account    required     /lib32/security/pam_unix.so nullok

Restart the services after this change:

/etc/init.d/instsvcdrv restart

The web service hasn't started yet.

/etc/init.d/dsm_om_connsvc start

If you want it to start after a reboot then run:

update-rc.d dsm_om_connsvc defaults 95

After this you should be able to login to your server.

https://192.168.0.10:1311/ [2]

Check the syslog for errors if you can't login. You can login using a ordinary user account on the machine and if logging in as root you will be able to do some more stuff. I believe I don't have to tell you that you should be very restrictive about who is having access to this service.